England VS USA FIFA LIVE Football Score 25/11/2022

England VS USA FIFA LIVE Football Score 25/11/2022

Buoyed by their sparkling 6-2 victory over Iran, England will go into Friday’s fixture against the USA brimming with confidence and knowing another win will secure their progression to the World Cup’s knockout phase. Southgate’s decision to employ a more-attack-minded 4-3-3 formation – a switch away from his previously-favoured 3-5-2 system – paid dividends, with the midfield trio of Bellingham, Declan Rice and Mason Mount offering dynamism and creativity in abundance. Other positives for the side saw winger Raheem Sterling, who was under pressure coming into the World Cup following a string of limp displays for Chelsea, cap off a lively display with a 46th-minute goal. Substitutes Jack Grealish and Marcus Rashford also found the back of the net late on.

However, alarm bells were raised after the match by both Southgate and several of his players over basic defensive lapses which allowed Iran to beat goalkeeper Jordan Pickford twice. They know that the USA possess the quality to capitalise on any repeat of those errors and are also likely to offer greater resistance at the back than the Iranians could muster. But the pressure is overwhelmingly on USA coach Gregg Berhalter’s players. A loss on Friday will leave them needing to win their last game – against Iran – to stand any chance of progressing past the group stage.

Gareth Southgate’s squad will be looking to build on Monday’s promising performance and has been boosted by news that captain and star striker Harry Kane is expected to be fit to play after the 29-year-old recuperated from an ankle injury picked up in the Three Lions’ opening fixture. Expect Kane to be assisted by Bukayo Saka, who scored twice in the win against Iran, and 19-year-old midfielder Jude Bellingham, who notched his first international goal in England’s opening game. For their part, the USA will be seeking an improved showing after an initially promising start against Wales on Monday gave way to a disappointing 1-1 draw, with Gareth Bale’s second-half penalty cancelling out Timothy Weah’s 36th-minute opener.

“Captain America” Christian Pulisic, who plies his trade for Chelsea in England’s Premier League, will again lead the side from the front. Several other members of the squad are also Premier League regulars. But familiarity will count for nothing on both sides of the Atlantic and inside the confines of the Al Bayt Stadium, where the so-called “special relationship” between the two countries will be put on pause for 90 minutes as they battle for supremacy on the pitch. A promising first-half performance and a well-taken goal from Timothy Weah was canceled out by Gareth Bale’s late penalty on Monday as the youthful USMNT team was denied victory at the start of its campaign in Qatar.

Next up is England, the favorite to top Group B having thrashed Iran 6-2 earlier this week – an ominous sign for Wales and the USMNT in their bids to qualify for the knockout stages. But win or draw against England and US coach Gregg Berhalter will know that a berth in the next round could be within his side’s grasp with a game against Iran to come.

It will be the biggest test the USMNT’s so-called “Golden Generation” has faced under Berhalter and potentially an era-defining game for a side that struggled for form throughout the qualifying rounds. “We know how much quality England’s going to have. But again, we think that we match up well against them,” US captain Tyler Adams said earlier this week, according to ESPN.

“We have an athletic team. We think that against the ball we’re really dominant at times. You saw that [against Wales] with our counter-pressing and how we’re able to create a lot of transition moments.”

Friday’s game will be played at Al Bayt Stadium in the city of Al Khor, kicking off at 2 p.m. ET. You have to go all the way back to 2002 for the last time the USMNT defeated a European opponent at the World Cup, although it did secure a 1-1 draw against England at the 2010 edition of the tournament in South Africa. Otherwise, results have tended to go in England’s favor, winning eight of the sides’ 11 meetings, and another victory would guarantee the 1966 World Cup winner’s progress to the knockout stages.

The good news for manager Gareth Southgate is that captain Harry Kane is fit to play after undergoing a scan on his ankle earlier this week, while Berhalter might look to 20-year-old Giovanni Reyna to sharpen his side’s attack. Reyna was an unused substitute against Wales and said his fitness is “really good” having been blighted by injuries in recent months. Wales and Iran contest the other Group B game on Friday when they meet at the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium.

Despite being side-by-side in FIFA’s ranking list, Rob Page’s Wales team will be confident of a victory after England exposed Iran’s defensive frailties on Monday. For both teams, it feels like a must-win game in order to qualify for the knockout stages. Host Qatar is also back in action on Friday against Senegal, two nations who both suffered defeats in their opening matches. Qatar was beaten 2-0 by Ecuador and Senegal lost by the same scoreline to Holland. Those two victorious teams will be looking to make it two wins from two when they meet at the Khalifa International Stadium.

That battle came to a head at the 37th minute of the first half, when the Haitian-born U.S. forward Joe Gaetjens managed to graze the ball just enough to sink it into the English goal. England never recovered, and the match ended in a 1-0 U.S. victory. So unthinkable was the result that many news outlets, including the New York Times, presumed that the reported score was a typo.

The last surviving member of the 1950 U.S. squad died in 2018, and few people alive today will remember that match. Still, its legacy looms large over the soccer rivalry between the U.S. and England, whose teams are slated to go head-to-head on Friday in Doha’s Al Bayt Stadium. The last time these two nations faced each other in a men’s World Cup was more than 10 years ago, in South Africa. It ended in a 1-1 draw. Though England is the favorite to win in Qatar, American fans are hopeful that their team can once again pull off a miracle.

More recent history doesn’t bode as favorably for the U.S. The team qualified for this World Cup after failing to do so four years ago in what was seen as a major setback in the effort to elevate the world’s most popular game on the American sports stage—the success of the U.S. women’s national team notwithstanding. Against England, in particular, the U.S. men’s team has lost the vast majority of its matches—all, in fact, but the 1950 World Cup group stage victory in Brazil and a 2-0 win at the 1993 U.S. Cup. Team USA is markedly younger and less experienced than the Three Lions (as the English squad is known), who arrived in Qatar off the back of formidable performances during last year’s UEFA European Football Championship as well as the 2018 World Cup.

But if the past is any guide, neither side should make any assumptions about how Friday’s game will go. England coach Gareth Southgate cautioned against complacency in a post-match news conference on Monday, noting that the U.S. team will “be coming for us full throttle.” And U.S. midfielder Christian Pulisic warned as much in the days leading up to the tournament. “We don’t look at the odds and we’re not at the World Cup just to make up the numbers,” he told Britain’s Daily Mirror. “We go, we give it everything in every game we play, we make America proud. Wherever that takes us we have to wait and see.”